I would go with Direct Video, as I don’t see much difference in color, though I could be wrong there as I’m not the best at discerning color. seems to me to just be a difference in brightness/luminance. the brightness is on par with all my other consoles (including ones supported by MiSTer), it’s only really the I/O board that is noticeably dimmer
I’m fine with it on my consumer TV, which is already pretty bright, but VGA out is pretty unusable on my VGA monitor
I wonder if it has something to do with power draw? I’m still using the PSU that came with the DE10, despite now having to power the IO board and the USB hub
Know I’m late here but I use the Meanwell 5A supply and it has no effect on the brightness of the IO board.
With MARS FPGA coming and MiSTer-based options like the Express and the Ironclad, hopefully someone has fixed these issues.
I am disappointed the IO board has the brightness issue and the lower color range. One of the killer features of the MiSTer for me is simultaneous digital and analog out, so that is a true all-in-one solution for all of displays, but between these issues and some cores threatening the requirement of dual SDRAM, it seems direct video is the way of the future and this is a feature that will be given less and less attention.
I recently found out about Kuro Houou’s testing of various HDMI>VGA DACs while watching RetroRGB. This has been great for those of us looking for a good HDMI>VGA transcoder, since there is very little datain that area and most adapters are notoious for crushing black levels.
Furthermore, in THIS paper, Kuro calls out the standard MiSTer IO board while testing the Retro Castle IO:
“The Mister project has a reference analog I/O board as well, produced and sold by popular Mister stores. These use the reference 6.1 design which has been proven to have incorrect voltage levels as well resulting in reduced luminance or over luminance levels. A new reference design is required and any 6.1 or below I/O boards should be avoided if you are looking for reference video levels.” -Data Collection, Page 10
According to that testing, the resistor ladder used by Retro Castle is apparently very high quality and produces an excellent picture at appropriate level. I’d love to hear if anyone has a Retro Castle board to give their opinion. I’ll probably grab one next year to replace my current 6.1 IO board. The IronClad did well in testing also.
On the HDMI side, I currently use a AG6200-based DAC with my MiSTer to output to a VGA monitor. There is even a special INI flag for those chips. The ini apparently adjusts the RGB range to a special limited mode, but looking at these results it looks like the chip is simply way off target on lower-level signals. I never looked too far into it, but I DID know that almost every VGA adapter I used either refused to work with some monitors or severely crushed black detail. I’d bet this has led to quite a few monitors being retired or severely mis-calibrated over the years.
Anyway, I just ordered the Benfei cable and ICY BOX AC502 to see how they compare. I hope this helps in that arena.
This is the same for other non official IO’s like the Jammix and the IronClad as you mentioned. I also heard people say the analog audio out can be pretty noisy which is improved on these other boards. MiSterAddons is making their own analog board to make up for the shortcomings of the offical spec as well, that should be out shortly too.
Wanted to bring up the new Groovy MiSTer core in case anybody missed it. Super exciting stuff, going to try to mess with it this weekend. My ultimate goal is to run Third Strike off this through the MiSTer to my CRT. Dreamland stuff as the CPS3 core seems a long way away
Just got an email about MiSTeraddon’s new IO DIrect Board and it looks really promising. My understanding is you lose simultaneous HDMI and Analog output but gain two SDRAM slots. It also improves the incorrect video levels from the previous board.
kind of a bummer for people who already have the original IO board, quite a bit of money spent on the board plus shipping only for it to have in their words incorrect 700mv Luma
native S-video and Composite sounds awesome though
I’m really looking forward to the updated IO boards. I’ve been considering a Retrocastle board for a while to improve color and luma levels with analog output. I love that they include the USB ports on the board as well. Hope these do the same.
I just saw Kuro mention the issue might be on the software side
I have this DAC, it’s been great for playing Xbox Series on a VGA monitor although I did see a few people mention it’s not great at switching resolutions apparently (I assume they mean games that switch between 240p/480i when using direct video)
I am really hopeful for these new (and not so new) analog IO board options. I’m still probably most impressed with Retrocastle, since they ave already launched with a good DAC and have the added benefit of the USB ports on their analog IO.
I recently found out about the PWM cores that use pulse width modulation to improve color output for higher-bit-depth consoles, and it’s a big improvement for PSX. This plus a Retrocastle analog IO is probably I’ll need for a while.
The ironclad is still very tempting though, since I like larger cases and they seem to have thought of almost everything.
Also, I never used direct video, but that’s a bummer if it has those issues. I haven’t noticed any issues but I am mostly looking at my analog output.
Yeah looking forward to seeing how the 24-Bit analog IO board from Sorg pans out, hoping it passes the Kuro test.
The Ironclad looks excellent, probably would have gotten that if I was jumping in to the mister for the first time. I bought the cheaper Atlantis mini-ITX board for a second mister setup, not got around to building it yet but I really wanted something with a bigger footprint so it doesn’t get pulled around like the ‘sandwich stack’ does.
Seems like the “MiSTer” setup has been cloned and a reduced price version will be appearing soon in various forms, including a handheld(!) and console versions.
Really excited for this one. Been thinking about a MiSTer for a while but it’s been too expensive and too niche for me to jump in.
I see this guy is saying the flagship version of this will have one bespoke cartridge slot. What are we guessing that will be? I’m thinking GB/GBC or GBA. Or I guess it could do both?
